Depending on which story you read first or who you believe, just know that neither side disagrees with the other. NBC did not want to renew its iTunes contract with Apple and was going to let its current contract expire in December. Rather than wait for the contract to expire and leave iTunes customers with only half seasons of NBC shows, Apple decided to just cancel the current contract early.
“We are disappointed to see NBC leave iTunes because we would not agree to their dramatic price increase,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. “We hope they will change their minds and offer their TV shows to the tens of millions of iTunes customers.”
Fun stuff. The funny thing is that it might seem like Apple did this to make NBC look like the bad guy. The even funnier thing is that NBC really is the bad guy, trying to bluff its way into getting Apple to charge $4.99 per NBC episode. NBC thought it had leverage by way of 30% of all iTunes TV purchases being NBC content.
But if you’re Apple, you’re need to wonder how you are going to make up that kind of content loss with perennial iTunes bestsellers The Office and Scrubs.
As of 8:24 PM PST, NBC is still on iTunes.
Popularity: 2% [?]
No Comments